I’ve been watching the original widescreen version of Elia Kazan‘s East of Eden (1955) since it came out on laser disc in…what was it, ’98 or thereabouts? The reasons I re-watch it every two or three years are (a) the performances — not just James Dean‘s but those from Julie Harris, Jo Van Fleet, Raymond Massey, Albert Dekker and Burl Ives, (b) Leonard Rosenman‘s furious, cymbal-crashing score, and (c) the scene in which Dean and Van Fleet trade observations about their similar natures and about what a prig Massey is and was, and (d) Dean and Harris’s ferris-wheel kissing scene. The Bluray…I don’t know when the Bluray comes out but probably sometime by mid-October.
